Green Energy

Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news. Featured Image Source

US confirms nations exempt from solar import tariffs – Imports from exempted countries are restricted to 3% of annual US crystalline silicon solar imports per country and 9% for all exempt countries combined. It is not yet clear how the tariffs will be reimposed once the limitations of 3% or 9% have been reached. There are over a hundred countries on the list, so I’m not going to include all of them here. However, here are four countries of note – India, Turkey, Brazil and Pakistan. The first three have solar manufacturing capacity in place or under construction, and Pakistan got headlines this weekend for offering Trina Solar tax incentives to build a factory. My gut says it’s India, if anyone at all, who exports panels to the USA. And interestingly – those Indian solar panels have a high probability of being Chinese manufacturers building factories elsewhere.

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[Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Micah Toll who does fantastic ebike/battery DIY YouTube howtos, 2 books and just released his latest book, DIY Solar Power. He’s giving Electrek readers Chapter 6 of his DIY Solar book FREE and is knocking 50% off the paperback and 90% off the Kindle version]

As an engineer and self-professed green energy nerd, I’ve spent many years teaching myself to build everything from electric vehicles to solar-powered gadgets. While there are many amazing products out there, I firmly believe in the “why buy what you can make” ethos.

One of the biggest hurdles to learning these skills was always finding good information. The internet is full of scattered project logs and how-to’s of varying quality, but often the info I could find was either too broad to be useful or too project-specific to apply to what I was trying to create. All of this made learning an arduous process.
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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news.

First Solar Is Using Robots to Better Tap the Sun – There are just a few dozen workers scattered about; before the renovation, there were hundreds. The company acknowledges that it cut jobs, but it says the ones that remain are safer and pay better. The panels produce 244 percent more power at a manufacturing cost of as little as 20¢ per watt, about 30 percent less than the cheapest Chinese equivalent. Header image is from this factory – and it represents the fundamental aspect of the solar panel manufacturing boom of recent years – robotics, not massive amounts of labor. First Solar will not bear the consequences of tariffs and is making the cheapest solar panels in the world. Probably not a bad place to be…

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Panasonic has announced their new HIT KURO (black) solar panel. The panel sports a black backsheet and a black frame, plus it hits a 19.4% efficiency, totaling a peak production value of 325W.

The panel seems the same (or very similar) as to what was announced by Tesla and Panasonic back in April of 2017 for the US market.

Panasonic brags that of the 4 million solar panels they’ve sold in Europe – only 148 of them have been returned for warranty issues.

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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news.

Trump opens the door for specific products, nations to be excluded from tariffs – Tariffs are expected to take effect February 7th. Multiple nations and technologies are going to request they be not have a tariff applied for various reasons. Some of these requests will be approved. Found a neat data point – one estimate suggests the solar tariff will net $1 billion.

URE to set up PV module plant in US – According to industry sources, apart from concerns about the safeguard tariffs, the three makers are building the plant to cater to a major US-based power generation developer who has decided to give URE massive PV module orders. The developer previously approached NSP for PV module supply, but NSP could not take all of its orders due to insufficient production capacity, the sources said. I can’t wait until I’m such a large developer that solar panel manufacturers will build factories to cater to ME! I wonder if this factory is being built for Cypress Creek Renewables.

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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news. Featured Image Source

US modules prices will still be lower by end of 2018 than 2017, says ReneSola chief – This is the same thing I said in my analysis of the Trump Tariff. So folks, end of world – no. You know what will come of this though – as we see the exact date of the shift from one tax amount to the next (it drops from 30% to 15% over fours years before going away), we’re going to see imports start to stack up in the ports. And then the morning that the tariff shifts, we’ll see containers flow out. Unnatural. Messes with the flow of business.

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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news. Featured Image Source

Trump tariff on imported solar panels at 30% – residential projects could increase $750-1000, cost up to 23,000 jobs – I know this was posted here yesterday, so leading the brief with it is kinda goofy…but it’s among the most important stories for the US solar industry since April of 2017 when it popped up. Don’t expect the industry to crash – but do expect to see some of the nicer solar panels to cost more. And those of you in states where solar was just getting to be interesting – you’re going to want to put it off for a year to let system prices fall again and match the increased tariff price.

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The Trump administration released its official ruling regarding the Suniva Section 201 case, and stated that they agree that the nation’s solar industry has taken damage as a result of global solar actions.

The administration has chosen to impose a 30% tariff on all imported solar cells and solar panels, decreasing 5% a year for four years. The first 2.5GW of solar cells imported will not be tariffed, to protect the domestic solar panel industry.

The tariffs are far below what Suniva and SolarWorld requested.

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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news. Featured Image Source

Bifacial technology was likely reason world’s lowest ever solar bid was rejected – !! – One Chinese PV manufacturer told PV Tech that it was aware that the exact make-up of the bid’s proposed system was P-type bifacial modules and single axis tracking. A requirement of the tender is that proven technology be used. The Masdar bid was around 25% lower on an LCOE basis. About the same improvement as can be achieved by using bifacial technology paired with trackers. My heart is broken. A big part of the logic I put forward with the Saudi bid was based on the possibilities put forth by new technology, and it was exactly the newness of the technology that has slain the lowest price solar power on the planet. Nonetheless – I am hopeful having learned about this data because it shows us a path forward that is repeatable outside of the Middle East as this technology matures. And that 10%+10%=25% rule of thumb is sweet knowledge.

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There were approximately 98GW of solar power installed globally in 2017, versus 70GW in 2016. That represents 40% volume growth in a single year! Woo, yeah!

The top 10 module suppliers delivered about 57GW of those volumes – 58% of the total. Even though these groups mostly tilt toward utility-scale work, here we’ll talk about some of their residential solar panels to get you up to speed.

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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news. Featured Image Source

Record wind output sends UK into negative pricing – Electricity data from utility shows that system buy and sell prices fell to -£3.71/MWh between 6-6:30pm and remained negative for four consecutive settlement periods. For settlement period 15 (7-7:30am 14 January), it fell as low as -£68.43/MWh. We covered the Tesla battery earning up to AU$1000/MWh a few days back. Pretty soon we’re going to stop talking simply about ‘negative electricity pricing’ and we’re going to start talking about how our plug-in and grid enabled cars got a bonus $/MWh bonus overnight, or our office battery, home battery, etc. Or maybe – we’ll get real smart with excess electricity and start making things real cheap based upon excess electricity generation modeling. Either way – this is our new reality. Adapt.

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Saule Technologies has signed a distribution agreement, with the Skanska Group, to sell their perovskite based solar panels. The two companies expect to install a project in Poland in 2018 using test cells.

This is the first time I’ve heard of any company signing actual contracts to market and install perovskite. The panels are expected to offer 100W/m² – an approximately 10% efficient solar panel.

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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news. Featured Image Source

Top 10 module suppliers in 2017 – Shown also are the seven companies we identified in the past 12-18 months as the companies that we expected to be in the 4GW+ annual shipment level during 2017, forming the exclusive grouping we named as the Silicon Module Super League (SMSL). Their highest volume products aren’t necessarily for consumers (large format utility-scale solar panels) – but some of their ’boutique’ product lines might be just right.

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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news. Featured Image Source

China builds ‘world’s biggest air purifier’ (and it seems to be working) – The system works through greenhouses covering about half the size of a soccer field around the base of the tower. Polluted air is sucked into the glasshouses and heated up by solar energy. The hot air then rises through the tower and passes through multiple layers of cleaning filters. If we figure out how to remove the smog, then at least we can mitigate the damage from the fossils being burnt. I’d prefer we not need to burn the fossils, but maybe, just maybe – it’s best to always have some being mined around the world – for sake of a broad resource base. Honestly, if I had kids – I’d take them to play around the air purifier outside – I’d buy my house nearby – pick a school nearby.

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Ukraine’s repurposing of 1GW of electricity transmission infrastructure, located in the Chernobyl nuclear exclusion zone, has passed a milestone of installing its first solar power plant – a 1MW plant.

It is a special plant because it is located a mere 100 meters away from the world’s largest movable structure – the Chernobyl Sarcophagus – that will seal in nuclear radiation from the still radioactive nuclear material.

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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news. Featured Image Source

Runaway 53GW Solar Boom in China Pushed Global Clean Energy Investment Ahead in 2017 – Solar investment globally amounted to $160.8 billion in 2017, up 18% on the previous year despite cost reductions of 25%. Just over half of that world total, or $86.5 billion, was spent in China. This was 58% higher than in 2016, with an estimated 53GW of PV capacity installed – up from 30GW in 2016. Globally, solar power did well. China is really pulling the world along for its ride – about 100% of the increase from 2016 to 2017 came from China.

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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news. Featured Image Source

Washington State leaves coal behind, but not its workers – After getting a permit to build a natural gas plant on the same site, the company has committed $55 million for community development (and the movement away from fossils). The coal plant employs about 300 workers, with an average wage over $80,000, a very respectable income for the small town of 16,000. The resulting legislation will result in half the plant being shut down by the end of 2020 and the other half by the end of 2025. The grant fund is divided into three parts, with $10 million for weatherization and energy efficiency projects; $20 million for education, job training and economic development projects; and $25 million for energy technology investments.  At least $5 million of the job training fund will be dedicated to Centralia plant workers. We are humans. We are fighting green house gases because we want humanity to continue forward, in a life that has an opportunity of comfort. I sympathize with the coal workers. It’s hard to be a specialist in a hard-working labor field, build your life around the land – and then be pulled from it while the land still has so much more to give. Still gotta cut coal though, gotta grit through it.

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In 2017, the United States built about 28.5GW of electricity generating infrastructure – 25GW of it utility-scale and about 3.5GW of distributed (<1MW) solar power. Wind and solar were 55.4% of the 28.5GW overall total, and about 49.2% of the utility-scale total (>1MW).

When subtracting the 11.8GW of utility-scale fossil retirements tracked by the EIA, the net new volume of US generation was 16.7GW of generating capacity, with 94.7% of that coming from renewables.
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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news. Featured Image Source.

New York City delivered a powerful blow to the fossil fuel industry by launching a climate change lawsuit against the biggest oil companies and promising to dump billions of dollars of fossil fuel stocks – Demanding that ExxonMobil, Chevron(CVX), BP (BP), Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips (COP) pay for the cost of protecting the city from the “existential threat” of climate change.The city on Wednesday also announced a goal to divest its $189 billion pension system from fossil fuel reserve owners within five years. New York said that would become first major U.S. pension plan to complete such an exit. A quick Google gives $120 billion as a cost for the city to protect itself from ocean rise and storm surges. Should these companies be sued out of existence for screwing up our oil flow? Or should we draw down via a carbon tax and use those funds to drive the revenue? I’d argue the courts are being forced to act because the politicians didn’t. First five pages of filing if you’re interested.

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Solaria’s goal is to deliver a good looking solar panel. They also want their panels to have a high efficiency – at a reasonable price, of course.

The 19.4% monoPERC “PowerXT®-350R-PD” (manufacturer’s specification page) is where we see it happen.

Smartly applied all black shingled solar cells combined with a black frame, keep your curbside appeal up and your kilowatt hour production high.

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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news.

Massachusetts becomes first state commission to approve mandatory demand charges for residential solar customers – A demand charge is based upon your peak electricity usage during the month. If, on Thursday at 2 PM, you were fast charging a car, washing dishes, taking a shower, running the AC, etc. and you set a usage record – the power utility would then be legally obligated to build infrastructure to able to handle that peak, even if only once. And oftentimes, that value holds for 18 months. This practice is much more common in commercial billing – I see it more often than not, having a demand charge is normal. The best way to manage your peak is to limit what you turn on and when, the second best way – a programmed battery that knows when to step up based upon internal demand. This applies to ‘net metering’ (solar) customers only.

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